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Expect Miracles: Charter Schools and the Politics of Hope and Despairreviewed by Douglas Harris - 2003 Title: Expect Miracles: Charter Schools and the Politics of Hope and Despair Author(s): Peter W. Cookson, Jr. and Kristina Berger Publisher: Westview Press, Boulder, CO ISBN: 0813366313, Pages: 240, Year: 2002 Search for book at Amazon.com Recent attention to vouchers has
over-shadowed the much larger existing school choice program in the
United States – charter schools. The charter movement,
now a decade old, includes 2,357 schools, encompassing 4 percent of
all K-12 schools in the U.S. How we understand and evaluate
such a large school choice program is likely to have a significant
impact on the future of the broader choice movement.
Expect Miracles: Charter Schools and the
Politics of Hope and Despair makes a significant contribution
to understanding charter schools. In “Part One: The
Landscape of Charter Schools,” Cookson and Berger start with
a clear and accurate description of charter school history,
beginning in Minnesota and extending to the 36 other states that
now have similar types of legislation. They successfully
define the charter school concept. They
provide up-to-date descriptions of how it has been applied
across states, although it is highly questionable whether charter
schools in most states are “held strictly accountable for
helping their students achieve academic and other performance
goals” (p.3), an... (preview truncated at 150 words.)To view the full-text for this article you must be signed-in with the appropriate membership. Please review your options below:
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